Electronic devices that become soft when implanted inside the body and can deploy to grip 3-D objects, such as large tissues, nerves and blood vessels have been created by researchers from The University of Texas at Dallas and the University … Continue reading →

Mr Aksenov, now 21 years old, founded technology company London Brand Management in 2011. The company provides an AI service for big brands who want to outsource customer or staff interactions to computers. Customers send questions in to LBM’s system … Continue reading →

What would you give for a retinal chip that let you see in the dark or for a next-generation cochlear implant that let you hear any conversation in a noisy restaurant, no matter how loud? Or for a memory chip, … Continue reading →

In December 2012, a pink-haired complex systems researcher named Brad Werner made his way through the throng of 24,000 earth and space scientists at the Fall Meeting of the American Geophysical Union, held annually in San Francisco. This year’s conference … Continue reading →

It’s Day 5 of the government shutdown and the Panda Cam is still off. What does this mean for American science students? One of the biggest effects making its way around the science blog-o-sphere is the cutting of funding for scientific research. … Continue reading →

CSID Director Bob Frodeman has some suggestions about the interconnection of research & society in post-austerity world. Now that we’ve been driven off the “fiscal cliff,” perhaps we should look around and assess the results. It turns out that sequestration … Continue reading →

Effective immediately, all education and public outreach activities should be suspended, pending further review. In terms of scope, this includes all public engagement and outreach events, programs, activities, and products developed and implemented by Headquarters, Mission Directorates, and Centers across … Continue reading →

Yesterday’s post introduced the context of neoliberalism as the backdrop of change in higher education. Here Martin Eve provides further clarification of the neoliberal context, linking the impact agenda under the Research Excellence Framework as a key trait of a privatised … Continue reading →

Good insight from Andrew Leonard: For many conservatives, the humanities departments of public universities are bastions of the “tenured left” busily brainwashing the young people of America into godless socialist postmodernism. They’d much rather for-profit corporations were in charge of … Continue reading →

I recently ran across this analysis by Dan Hind in Al Jazeera. It’s a delighfully cogent summary of the main drivers of the scientific enterprise: unaccountable power in the form of national and corporate investment, which determines to a large … Continue reading →

Someone can do the relatively simple accounting and see that the humanities–”majors without an immediate job payoff”–are already subsidizing those which have a “job payoff.” In fact, this was already done at few institutions, including UCLA. But this is a … Continue reading →

There’s a war going on that you know nothing about between a coalition of great powers and a small insurgent movement. It’s a secret war being waged in the shadows while you go about your everyday life. In the end, … Continue reading →

Does this make an argument for moving elite research centers–for which the Federal government & corporations pay out an enormous amount of money over many years–to areas that will be less physically hit by global warming… in like, I don’t know, North … Continue reading →

Here is what Nowotny had to say: “This strong message to the leaders of Europe confirms the importance of the ERC Scientific Council’s strategy to find, fund and empower the best researchers. It is therefore vital that the future EU … Continue reading →

Whatever you think about spending on sport, in times of austerity or otherwise, there is no denying that the strategy paid off – at least, if your yardstick for success is Olympic medals. The message couldn’t be more clear: if … Continue reading →

Less economics and more philosophy… On Monday, Ben Bernanke wasn’t talking like a scientist. He was talking like a philosopher. “The ultimate purpose of economics, of course, is to understand and promote the enhancement of well-being,” he said. To a … Continue reading →

The use of high-volume hydraulic fracturing for natural gas drilling has ignited a fiery political debate. Advocates tout natural gas as a clean-burning, cheap, and abundant fuel that can boost economic growth and energy security. Detractors question these benefits and … Continue reading →

These guys are on the right track, if you ask me! We feel the ‘occupy’ meme fits the subject well. In our case occupy is not about protest or revolution. It is about getting inside a difficult issue and tackling … Continue reading →

Leaping from academia to industry can be vexing, confusing and, to be frank, sometimes irritating. It is not easy to be trained all your life by trusted professors only to be told that some of this training needs to be … Continue reading →